


Pianist Fingers

by royalwisteria



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, a music au, and by music I mean lots of piano
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalwisteria/pseuds/royalwisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mom first taught him piano; she started when his feet couldn't even touch the ground, gentle hands guiding his on the keys. His hands were small and were nowhere close to the ten keys her fingers could encompass. He was in awe, then, of her and of the music she created so simply and easily and would clap excitedly and urge her to play again and again and again.</p>
<p>Now, with his dad's heart attack, Stiles thinks of her often as he practices pieces that he wrote, cooks healthy meals (because there's no way he's returning to grad school knowing what happened in his absence). He thinks of her at Allison and Scott's house, a beer in hand, wondering if the echoes of Clair de Lune he hears is her or the radio playing faintly in the background; he thinks of her as he starts giving piano lessons to Talia Hale, daughter of Derek Hale and Jennifer Blake. But as he settles himself back into Beacon Hills, Stiles is not thinking of her when he falls in love with Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pianist Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> I play the piano myself, as a hobby, and will be pulling from my knowledge of theory for this fic. I hope you enjoy!
> 
>  
> 
> *all chapter titles will be pulled from piano pieces mentioned and links will be provided
> 
> [[link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqL94H6h1mU)]

It is almost nine in the evening when his phone goes off. Stiles is sitting down with a new book, a book for pleasure because he’s done enough work this week to take a break, when it goes off and he lolls his head backwards with a long suffering sigh before he goes to his breakfast bar to dig through papers to find it. He finds it, sitting on and below some bills yet to be paid by him and his roommates, and his fingers can’t move fast enough when he notices the caller ID— _Beacon Hills Hospital_.

“Hello?” he asks, perfunctorily, listing the people it could be in his head. Scott, maybe, though he’s not been hospital-clumsy in years, maybe Allison, Lydia, though his dad is at the top of the list. He’s been at the top of his list for years and years, even since Stiles realized that his parents are not immortal and discovered exactly what someone in the police force faces.

“Hello, is this—”

“Stiles Stilinski, yes, is this about my dad?”

“Ah. I see.” Whoever it is doesn’t seem pleased with his impertinence, but Stiles has long learned to not give a damn about that. “Your father experienced a heart attack some hours ago and is currently under care here at the Beacon Hills—”

“You need me there, okay, insurance, whatever, I’ll be there,” Stiles hastily gets out, glancing around his apartment, shuffles through the papers to the notepad he’s started to always keep around, looks for a pen. On it he jots down the time after a glance to his microwave and the date and a note that simply reads _dad - heart attack_.

“Oh, well, your father is currently in surgery, and we are required to notify the nearest relative to inform you—”

“I’ll be there,” Stiles insists and hangs up before she can say anything else.

He stands, a moment of inertia, everything speeding _too fast_ through his mind before he leaps into action. He grabs his keys, his wallet off the entryway table and is out the door, hands shaking as he locks the door behind him.

 

 

His dad is fine, of course he is, but Stiles always thinks of the worst scenario first and he had a four and half hour drive to go through each and every single one of them. He sits in the hospital room with his dad, head tilted back, having forced himself through every nurse trying to tell him it isn’t currently visiting hours. It’s dark outside, a gibbous moon, and there are faint stars in the sky. He knows the book he was about to read remains in his little living room, on the slightly ratty couch in front of the admittedly small TV (he was never big on TV, too much sitting still for too long with nothing kinetic even with medication). He knows that he has, by now, missed three of his private lessons, a master class and his fingers ache to touch the plastic covering any of his school’s pianos, all of which he knows intimately.

He sits there for a long time, alone except for the consistent sounds of machines around him. They thrum loudly and he tries to place the key it’s in, major or minor, the interval between the lower hum of the machine his dad is hooked up to and the higher pitched, slight buzz of the AC. A fifth? Seventh? He tries to focus on it, but then there’s the slight whisper of breath from his dad and his hearing is derailed by the fragile sound of it.

“Jesus,” Stiles whispers, the sound broken in a room of solid background, hands clasped and hanging between his spread legs as his head hangs. The chair isn’t comfortable; the arms are that hard, varnished wood that hurts his arms and elbows so he eventually leaned forward to get his elbows on the top of his knees.

His feet start tapping a rhythm he vaguely recognizes from one of the pieces he was learning recently— what was it, Schubert? But it’s slightly bluesy or jazzy, makes him think a little of Gershwin, and then he remembers that had been tuned into a blues and jazz radio station for the entire drive without even noticing. Stiles breathes out slowly, inhales too quickly and chokes a little.

Sties makes his foot stop tapping because trying to figure out which part, exactly, is he tapping out with his feet and now his fingers on the sides of the other hand and it will drive him to distraction.

“Stiles?”

Oh dear lord, it’s Mrs McCall and he doesn’t want to deal with the careful, cautious pity on her face. He thinks it’s weird that she’s here on the night shift until his eyes actually take in the room, instead of just the noise, and he notices that sunlight is shafting through the room. The sun rose and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Yeah?” he asks and stops to wonder when he started sounding so tired, so _defeated_ , his tone a flat.

She takes a few steps in. “Is Scott on his way?”

He carefully regulates his breathing, tries to steady his heart— he doesn’t want his voice to go unsteady in his lie. “I— I left my phone at home.”

Her face carefully smooths, as though she is used to hearing lies. “Do you want to be alone?”

Stiles tries to smile, oh, he tries so hard, but all it does is somehow make tears appear at the corners of his eyes so he stops the attempt. “Kind of.”

Mrs McCall steps further into the room and presses a firm hand to his shoulder. He’s nearly twenty-six and this is still a surprise, that someone will willingly touch the hyperactive kid, that someone will try to anchor him down. “I’ll call Scott.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything, but there are fine tremors running through his body and Mrs McCall most definitely feels them. She pulls her phone out, then and there, and Scott is there in twenty minutes. His dad is still asleep and now he’s puzzling out the keys the piece was in, wondering if he tried hard enough and went at it long enough if he could play it. It was a trio piece, though, with a bass, sax and piano and he probably couldn’t, but maybe he could get a piano duet if he thought about it long enough and that’s when Scott arrives, just as he’s started writing notes in his mind.

“Stiles?” Scott has never been good at concealing his emotions, or at least not from Stiles, because he can hear the concern and the goddamn _pity_ in his voice.

“Yeah?” he mumbles, the broken whistle of breathe from his dad’s mouth distraction enough from the sounds of machines.

“Is he… is he going to be okay?”

He glances up then. It’s been a few months since Stiles has seen Scott, maybe it was Christmas, but it’s always refreshing to see the face of his best friend. The uneven jaw, deep-set eyes, the sense of confidence that surrounds him now: these are the hallmarks of Scott to him and it’s a relief when he pulls up another chair beside him.

“His surgery ended hours ago,” Stiles says, leaning back, his spine a hypotenuse to the chair. His arms land back onto the hard arms, but they’re secondary to the familiar, welcome presence of Scott. He hadn’t even fully realized that Scott would help until he was here.

“And he hasn’t…?”

“No,” Stiles replies, eyes drifting to the beloved face of his dad. “He—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence because something is crawling up his throat, insistent, demanding attention and he starts choking. Scott hesitantly rubs the space between Stiles’ shoulder blades, close to the knob of his spine. The gesture does not provide the comfort that Scott had meant, but causes Stiles to push grief down his throat and sit up.

“Where’s Allison?” Scott shifts in his chair, nervous, and accidentally causes the chair to move in a screech that has both of them wincing.

“She’s out in reception,” Scott finally murmurs. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Stiles turns to stare at his dad, the oxygen mask covering familiar wrinkles. “Just stay,” he says lowly. “Please, just— stay.” Scott doesn’t quite smile, but Stiles can tell that he’s pleased without looking at him.

“Of course I will. You’re my best friend, my _brother_. I’ll stay.”

“Thanks, Scott,” Stiles whispers tiredly, and sags in the chair, neck tilted oddly forward. “I mean it.”

“Get some rest,” Scott says and forces Stiles into a more comfortable position. “I’ll be here, and your dad will be awake next time you wake up.”

And since Stiles hasn’t slept since the night before he heard about the heart attack, he falls asleep.

 

 

Scott isn’t there when he wakes up, but his dad _is_ , flipping through a magazine and Stiles sits up slowly, ignoring the creaks in his body from being in one position so long. “Dad,” he says, and his dad looks up and smiles softly.

“I see you’re up.”

Stiles sniffs, or pretends he does as he rubs at his nose. “Oh, yeah, wasn’t even aware I was falling asleep.”

His dad looks like he doesn’t believe him, due to Stiles’ old habit of lying to get out of any and every situation. “I’m fine,” his dad says, and Stiles’ mouth immediately flattens into a flat, unforgiving line.

“You had a heart attack,” he says, voice hard. “A _heart attack_. If I was at home, this never—”

“You can’t say that,” his dad cuts him off, brushing his sons concerns away with a wave of his hand. “It still could have happened.”

“Dad,” Stiles says, and it’s always been hard for him to express one singular emotion for a length of time. “When I’m not home, what do you eat? Cookies, cakes and you always put way too much butter on everything! Of course I—”

The door creaks and Stiles cuts himself off, always unwilling to have emotional confrontations in front of strangers. It’s too revealing, too intimate, shows far, far too much.

“Sorry, Stiles, Mr Stilinski…”

“Allison,” John Stilinski says, with a short nod and then a small smiles crosses his face and it’s all Stiles can do to not start crying that his dad is _still alive_ and right in front of him. Brining a fist to his mouth, he bites on a knuckle to keep him grounded, centered, on here and now. “And Scott. Did you get me some good food?”

At this Stiles whips around and eyes zero in on the bag in Scott’s hand. “What did you get?” he asks, voice so quiet he can hardly hear it himself, but this is Scott, they have some sort of telepathic thing at times, and it works now.

He swallows and Allison gently takes the bag from him. “It’s mostly fruit with some granola,” she says and Stiles slowly relaxes back in his seat, legs splayed in front of him. A few minutes later, as Allison is pulling out oranges and apples because, seriously, that is all Scott knows about fruit, Isaac steps in and stays close to the door. Stiles stares at him, perplexed, but a glance at Scott and the way his spine seems less tense answers his question.

“Is there a real reason why Isaac is here?” he asks Allison, scooting closer as Scott sidles up to Isaac himself.

Allison sighs, tucks hair behind her ear as she peels an orange for his dad. “Scott needed him to run an errand for work,” she mumbles finally and Stiles grits his teeth.

“And he told Isaac to come here?”

“It’s not like we’re at home,” Allison snaps at him, though her face immediately softens. “Sorry, Stiles, that was uncalled for.”

“No,” Stiles says, running a hand over his face and leaving it there, blocking his sight. “It’s fine, I was being an ass.”

“Hey, Stiles,” his dad says, taking an orange section from Allison’s hands, ignoring the slight complaint she only half-says. “You should go home. I’ll be here later today, your friends will be around to help, so go home. Get some real sleep.”

There’s a betrayal in there somewhere, but then Scott is at his side, an arm easily lifting him up and that makes him so angry, irrationally angry, but Stiles doesn’t kick and scream all the way out the hospital.

 

 

There are calls to be made, emails to be sent, and apologies all round. Stiles knows exactly what he has missed since he left, and he knows that there is no way he is going back to school, back to Santa Barbara, not with all of this going on. He blanches to think of the money spent on a degree it looks like he might not be getting. There must be some sort of deal he can work out with UCSB, though, because he’s _this_ close to getting through his thesis, the final composition. This is an extenuating circumstance, surely someone’ll understand.

His house smells mustily familiar, smells returning to him like memories, curling into his brain. He wonders what Scott smells as he pulls Stiles inside and upstairs, to his bedroom, if it’s familiar or unfamiliar to him. They pass the living room, which now has a simple standing piano that his dad had bought as a graduation gift from university. The brown wood gleams, cover pulled over the keys to protect them. He wonders if it’s in tune before he realizes that he’s in his room, shirt half-off.

“Back off,” Stiles snaps, stepping away and pulling his shirt off himself. “I’m not the invalid here.”

Scott looks at him. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Look—” Stiles starts, then cuts himself off abruptly. “I don’t like hospitals very much,” he says finally and doesn’t allow himself to say anymore, catching the shirt tossed at him, one that smells of his dad’s laundry detergent, a familiar hole near the hem at his hip.

“I know,” Scott says, solemn, and it’s so weird that Scott is being solemn to him, to Stiles, that he bursts out laughing. “You should get some real sleep,” Scott says moments later and manhandles him until Stiles is curled on his old bed, sheets soft on his arms and cheek, pants lying somewhere on the floor. It’s weird, to be taken care of. He’s used to taking care of others. “I’ll stay on the couch downstairs.”

Stiles waits until he hears Scott settle down, turning the TV on and everything, before he cries.

 

 

It takes a few months before anyone realizes that Stiles hasn’t returned to Santa Barbara and he’d think it comical if it wasn’t also kind of sad. The first month is expected; someone needed to stay at home and take care of his dad and he was the man for the job. The second month slips by and no one notices that he takes a weekend off to go back to his apartment and gather all his things. He had already notified his landlady that he’d be moving out and there’s a post-it on his door when he gets there with condolences for his dad’s heart attack but that hopefully he’ll make a full recovery.

Stiles crumples it and tosses it away once he’s in his apartment. He had planned to spend the night here, and he does spend the night, but he doesn’t sleep. There are endless trips back and forth between his Jeep and his front door and so stuff to go through that he can’t imagine taking any time to sleep. Besides, sleep is something he’s started to avoid more and more. The dark room haunts him. He can almost imagine he’s back in the hospital, the humming interrupted by his dad’s now and then ragged breath. He spent most nights sitting in his childhood bed for a couple hours, before giving up and cleaning obsessively, the bathroom, the living room, before sitting at the piano, until he can feel his body giving out an hour or two before dawn.

It’s what happens in Santa Barbara. He makes endless trips back and forth from the Jeep and his apartment, his home for the past couple years emptying and losing what made it home, and the same with his office. The walls are naked and everything from the cupboards have been put into boxes to either give away or bring home. He’s giving his dishes to a friend who had always professed they really wanted his dishes because she loved the ovular shapes. His bedding is going to the closest Salvation Army, and his books are placed into boxes that are at the bottom of the piles in the back of his Jeep.

He hates seeing his life encapsulated so well and curls on his mattress sometime around 5. It doesn’t smell familiar anymore. His apartment used to smell like vanilla all the time because he would put a mug of vanilla in his oven at least every month. His home in Beacon Hills, the home that’s home because of family, smells nothing like vanilla. It’s a mix of must and things that have never been said, blame never laid, and a faint hint of apple pie: sugar, cinnamon and dough. And there, a ball on his mattress, heart a tightness in the cavity of his body, his friends find him and force him out for a night of heavy drinking, tears all around, and a confession of love between his two best friends. It dissolves from there into making out and paper wrappers thrown at them and Stiles stumbles with a friend and crashes at his apartment, curled up and too drunk to cry.

 

 

It’s early evening and the sun is just about to set when he arrives in Beacon Hills and no one is home when he unloads his Jeep, which is incredibly lucky. Stiles doesn’t want to field questions about what exactly he thinks he’s doing, what’s going on with his apartment, school, if the smell hanging around him is alcohol or maple syrup. His keychain feels emptier without his apartment and office keys. He’ll miss them both: his book is no longer at the little table and each and every picture of everything that is important to him is now in a box. Stiles isn’t sure when he’s going to unpack them.

 

 

“Stiles, we need to talk.”

Most sentences that start with his name never end well. Stiles can make a long list of all the conversations that started with his name that ended in some sort of tragedy, though some of those tragedies might have been exacerbated by his teenaged selfs natural flair for drama.

“Sure,” he says hesitantly, going into the living room to lean against his dad’s least favorite armchair. His dad is on the couch, having returned from the hospital a week earlier, legs propped on the leg rest in front of him. The upholstery of each piece of furniture in this room doesn’t match. The couch is a navy, the footrest is paisley and the chair is a grey with a hole in the seat because it used to be Stiles’ dad’s favorite. “What’s up?”

His dad looks at him, the patented ‘I Know What You’re Doing.’

“I don’t,” Stiles defends himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s almost been a month, Stiles,” his dad starts.

“More than a month, actually.”

His dad rolls his eyes. “You haven’t gone back to Santa Barbara.”

Stiles claps for a few moments. “Your observation skills as Sheriff are remarkable. Anything else you’ve noticed?”

“There are new boxes in the basement and I’m pretty sure they’re from your apartment and office.”

Stiles stands straight; he tries to make it look more gradual, but he’s feeling the need for distance and it ends up more jerky and abrupt than he intended. “What of it?”

“You should go back to school.” His dad’s tone is gentle, the loving father tone has been perfect over the years.

“I’m not going back.”

“I’ll be fine, Stiles, so go back. Stay at a friends place. You shouldn’t stay here.”

It’s now that Stiles realizes that neither of them are looking at each other. His dad is determinedly not looking at him and Stiles takes a moment to trace the lines of his careworn face, the stress on his forehead, the smile lines around his mouth. It is all so familiar, yet before the heart attack Stiles hadn’t closely looked at his dad in years. Maybe not since high school, since Stiles had been at home then. All through college he was a whirlwind of activity but finally, _finally_ , he was in classes that interested him, that he could try and whiz through and still not finish and know everything. And the music, oh, the _music_ , the hours he would spend on the piano because years later it was okay to play.

“Dad, I’ve already told Santa Barbara and they’ve accepted my dropping out.”

His dad looks disappointed; it’s the face Stiles hates the most and it’s the face he seems to see the most of.

 

 

Stiles thinks that getting a job is a bit like applying for grants and scholarships and interviews like the various concerto competitions he’s participated in. It’s time consuming, and he spends a lot of time ignoring the looks his dad gives him and the talks he attempts. Scott gets in on it, too, eventually and Allison tags along because they’re attached at the hip in everything they do. It used to be Scott and Stiles attached to the hip, but Scott and Stiles went to different colleges and Scott and Allison went to the same one. Where once they were high school sweetheart, on and off again, they became college lovers with more passion, more drama and married a year after graduation. Stiles was the best man and Lydia was not the maid of honor.

He applies everywhere he can, whether or not they’re accepting applications. He’s desperate enough he applies to the local fast food places, grocery stores and gas stations. He has an interview for the 7/11 on the other side of town, but they end up telling him he’s overqualified for the position. Stiles now only plays piano when he’s sure his dad will be either away or asleep; his favorite time to play is late, late at night, when his dad is so deep asleep nothing could wake him. He’s no longer house-ridden, but his working hours have been severely cut down in order to keep him healthy. Stiles suspects that in a couple months his dad will be working just as much as before, but with Stiles here, at least he’ll be eating right.

 

 

The fridge has already been cleared of anything he disapproves of, like the frozen chicken nuggets, fatty dressings and the beers lining the doors of the fridge. The cupboards get a sweep as well, though Stiles doesn’t toss the low-fat peanut butter and other lower-fat items that his dad got. Stiles half-believes that these are all things he bought, however long ago, and his father left in the cupboards because he’d rather eat the fattier versions.

Every time Stiles goes through his resume, edits it, reads it over, prints it out, he notices the details about UCSB. Dropped out, finished three years, he was _so close_ to finishing. Now and then he hears strains of one of the compositions he was working on and sometimes he’s at the piano, and his fingers are poised, stretched wide across the keys. These pieces of music never go away; sometimes it’s not even his own compositions, but a beloved Chopin waltz, or one of his attempts to transpose one of Vivaldi’s many violin sonatas for piano only and always, always, he returns to Clair de Lune.

Stiles knew that he couldn’t live without music, but he’d somehow thought that he’d be more likely to find a career that wasn’t related to music after dropping out of grad school. He never thought that he’d go around all the schools with posters offering piano lessons, with his name and phone number in tabs at the bottom, but he ends up doing just that.

 

 

Someone calls him late evening. His dad is in bed— he had taken the stairs as though his limbs were robotic, stiff and heavy— and Stiles is sitting at the piano, his composition book on top with a pencil to scratch notes in and erase as needed. The ring surprises him out of the G sharp he’s just writing down, part of a chord with D sharp and A natural. He fumbles with his phone a little, is half-curious and half-terrified when he notices that it’s an unknown number and answers.

“Hello,” he says, probably a little too cautiously. After all, this is _his_ phone, why sound nervous as hell?

“Hello, is this, ah, Stilinski?”

“Yes, it is.” He thinks, unusually slowly, music slowly drifting from the foreground to background. It’s taking too long, but he finally realizes what this call is for after a few moments of silence. “Is this about piano lessons?”

“Yes.” The woman sounds relieved and Stiles smiles, twirling the pencil. “I am, I mean, I saw your poster at the elementary school— no, well, my colleague actually saw the poster and was talking about it and I asked for the number. My husband saw it too and thinks lessons sounds like a good idea.”

“I see.” He’s smiling really widely now; she can probably hear it, but he doesn’t care. It sounds like domestic bliss to him: dad picking up the little tyke from school, bringing the slip of paper home and talking it over after dinner with his wife, who had come home from work to her man in the kitchen. It sounds lovely, far more than perfect.

“We have a daughter, just about to finish her second grade, and we’ve been looking for something other than soccer to occupy her time.”

“And piano sounds like the perfect alternative,” Stiles suggests.

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I’m assuming that you’d like afternoon lessons. School ends at 3 for her, so how does a lesson at 4 sound? Gives her time to get home, have a snack, cram some last minute practice in and then we start?”

“You sound like you’re used to this.”

His smile dims a little. “To lessons, yes, though I have more experience with older students. Would you like a trial lesson before you commit?”

“Ah, sure, that sounds good. What day is best for you?”

“That question is directed at you, really. I’m fine with any day, you go ahead and choose which day is easiest for you.”

There’s a slight humming sound and muffled sounds, as though she was pressing the phone against something. Stiles can hear her voice distantly, but can’t make out the words.

“How’s the day after tomorrow, Thursday?”

He smiles, playing a left-handed A-major scale. “Thursday sounds good. I have lessons in my own home, so let me give you my address.”

“Let me get a pen real quick,” she says and in a moment she’s ready. Stiles gives her his information and there’s a bright, hopeful thank you.

“I don’t know why you’re thanking me,” Stiles says, playing a double A-major scale now, left-handed, all chances of slip-ups eliminated after years of practice. “But, I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name. Mine was on the poster— Stiles Stilinski— but I don’t think I know yours.”

“Oh my god,” the woman says in a quick rush of breath. “I’m sorry, terribly sorry. My name’s Jennifer Blake. My husband is Derek and our daughter is Talia. Derek’ll be taking her to your house for the lesson, I’ll be working.”

“That’s so sweet,” he half teases.

There’s a light patter of laughter. “He’s very sweet. Almost unbearably so.” Another burst of laughter that ends softly, and Stiles can imagine a couple standing side by side, Derek with an arm around her waist, pinching just a little too tightly at the comment. His throat tightens and hurts and he forces himself to chuckle as well.

“Tell Derek I look forward to meeting both him and Talia on Thursday.”

“Yeah, of course. Bye.”

The hang-up is abrupt; Stiles imagines the rest of the scene, a nuzzle, quick kisses pressed to a jawline and makes himself stop.

 

 

At dinner, his dad pokes at the vegetables on his plate. His mouth opens and closes a few times, but then he takes a look at Stiles face and eats them without an uttered complaint.

“I prefer carrots, you know,” his dad does say, after dinner.

“Then we can have some tomorrow,” Stiles blithely replies. “But we had carrots last night and we can’t have them every single night.”

“Can we not have zucchini, though?” His dad’s eyes wrinkle as he looks at Stiles. He feels himself waver, but just a little.

“I like zucchini, so no. We’re having it. If we’re having carrots every other day, you can’t complain about the other vegetables we have.”

His dad sighs and stands slowly. Stiles watches him critically; he watches how his dad moves much slower now, how he doesn’t bend his wrists as well, all sorts of things that add up to his dad being older than he was ten years ago. Ten years ago, he looked like he could have passed for ten years younger than that, and it hurts Stiles to see his dad looking older than his age now.

 

 

The doorbell buzzes a few minutes before 4 and Stiles nearly falls over himself in his rush to answer the door. He takes a few moments to compose himself in front of the door, some deep breaths and a nervous hand smoothing his hair so it doesn’t flop in front of his hair in an unprofessional way.

“Hi,” he says brightly as he opens the door, a perfected smile in place as he does so. It soon fades as he faces the glowering man that has got to be Derek, but he can’t quite reconcile the image of happy couple Jennifer-and-Derek. In his mind, Derek was softer around the face, less stubbly and most definitely had a smile.

“Stiles Stilinski, then?” His voice is gruff too, though not quite as deep as Stiles expected from the leather jacket and stubble combo he’s got.

“Yes,” Stiles says slowly. “Derek Blake?”

“Hale, actually.” Derek continues glowering at him, eyes sweeping up and down, most likely judging him harshly. Stiles swallows.

“Okay, Jennifer kept her surname, I dig that,” Stiles responds, looking around. There’s a sleek car parked on the road in front of the house, but no Talia. “Where’s Talia?” Derek doesn’t say anything, but continues staring at him. Stiles shifts nervously. “Are you rethinking the lessons, or is there something else going on?”

“Talia’s in the car,” Derek says at last and motions entering the house. “Can I come in? I’d like to talk before the lesson.”

“Uh, sure, I guess.” Stiles moves back and Derek walks through. The foyer suddenly seems too small; Derek’s shoulders are too wide for the two of them to fit comfortably with all the tension between them. Stiles leads him to the living room and gestures towards the couch. “Would you like something to drink? Water, coffee?”

Derek’s motions, Stiles notices, are economical. They’re brief, almost jagged, and the head shake he gets is rough, almost mechanical. “Sit, please.” Biting his lip, Stiles does so on the armchair opposite.

“I wanted to ask about your experience.”

Stiles’ eyebrows come together. “Oh, this is an interview thing?”

Derek doesn’t respond vocally, but the flattening of his mouth is as good as actual words.

“What sort of experience would you like to know about? Like, how long I’ve been playing, where I’ve gone to school—?”

“Your entire musical history.” It’s more of a growl than fully realized words, but hey, this is money, a _job_ , and Stiles isn’t about to fuck it up trying to teach an adult about communication skills.

“I started playing when I was a toddler, my mom played, and I went to Columbia for my undergrad. It was, uh, composition, and then I was attending UCLA for a master’s in performance, but…” Stiles doesn’t know how to frame this, because there are so many ways to say it that would make him look lackluster, like he dropped out because of too much work, it was too difficult, or kicked out. “I dropped out for personal reasons.”

Those eyebrows draw together, seriously like caterpillars or something, and Derek’s frown deepens. “Personal reasons.”

Stiles shifts a little in his seat. It is a conscious, very conscious, effort to not fiddle with the hem of his shirt, roll his fingernails on the armchair. “Yes. Titled personal because I don’t consider them a topic of conversation with near-strangers.” And then he smiles his most charming smile, just to annoy him— which it does, Stiles can see his jaw clench slightly and he continues. “But, if you must know, my dad was hospitalized and I came home to take care of him.”

The jaw slowly relaxes and there’s a soft surprised look to Derek’s face. His expression quickly flattens to nothing, however, leaving no trace of how honest he was being earlier. “I hope he’s okay.”

Stiles knocks on the wooden knob at the end of the armchair, because his dad has been doing better, he’s at a check-up right now in fact, and Stiles really, really doesn’t want that to change. “You’re not here to talk about my dad, are you? I mean, I get that he’s the Sheriff, but you came for a piano lesson. Do you have any other questions about my credentials? I have a resume upstairs if you’d like to take a look at it.”

“I’d rather hear you play a piece then read a resume,” Derek gruffly says. “And if I think you’re good enough, I’ll bring Talia in.”

His mouth twists and he stands abruptly, twisting his wrists and hears a faint, quiet pop in his left wrist. “You’d like to hear me play a piece. I’m going to go ahead and assume you have zero musical background and play whatever I feel like, because I’ve played so many pieces there’s no way I could count them for you. That’s part of being a performer.”

Derek’s indifferent expression doesn’t change, a complete mask and Stiles sighs. “Maybe you should invite Talia in,” he heavily hints. “So she has an idea what piano music sounds like.”

Oh. Derek’s jaw does that tightening thing again and a flicker of annoyance flickers through his eyes. “My mother-in-law plays,” he grinds out. “So she’s aware of piano music.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow and remarks, as cooly as he can, “is that so.” Then he walks across the room to the piano and settles himself as quick as possible. His fingers curve over the keys, a familiar pose, though these keys themselves are not as familiar and then he plays.

After a few moments, Derek’s voice stops him. “You’re mocking me.”

Stiles turns and give him the charming smile once more. “Oh, not at all. I composed sheet music for all of Katy Perry’s hit songs as a project during my undergrad. They’re quite complex actually.”

Derek stands and Stiles remains on his piano bench as Derek comes up behind him. “I don’t see how ‘I Kissed a Girl’ could be complex,” he sneers.

“Hey,” Stiles says in protest. “I was composing a piece for a single instrument from a song that has multiple melodies. It wasn’t easy trying to cover as many of the different rhythms and such.”

“Show me the music.”

This is where Stiles puts his foot down, and even stands, sliding the bench back a couple inches. It stands between them, a couple feet wide and sturdy. “If I showed you the music,” he says slowly, unconsciously lowering his voice as he glares at Derek. “Would you understand it? Right now you are slighting my ability as a musician, which is all you’ve done since you’ve come through the door of _my_ home. Your wife called and set this lesson up, and if you have such a problem with me and how I chose to use my talents and skills, take it up with _her_. Not me. She also told me that you had agreed to this, which seems to be the exact opposite of what’s going on.”

Derek’s mouth had fallen up sometime during his diatribe, at first in some sort of protest, but it remains hanging open for several moments after Stiles is done. He takes a step back, mouths snapping shut silently and looks directly at the tip of Stiles’ nose, as though avoiding his eyes. It’s kind of obvious, which is what makes the apology that stumbles out of his mouth both funny and semi-insincere.

“I’m sorry for insulting you. I just don’t find music lessons necessary.”

“And soccer is,” Stiles says. “Balance, okay, sports and creativity. Let her decide what she wants.”

“She’s in the second grade,” Derek says, a little contemptuously.

Stiles remembers his second grade a little too abruptly— he has to swallow before he responds. “She’s still a person— ugh, come on, just let her in and let’s get on with the lesson. You can sit over there and observe, as most parents do, and make a decision afterwards.”

His movements are stiff, but Derek moves to the front door and calls for Talia. The girl practically whips out of the car, slamming it shut so forcefully that Stiles winces from inside the house. He can hear a grumble from Derek, so he can’t be happy about the rough treatment of his super nice car, but he probably shouldn’t be using it to drive a second grader around if he’s going to mutter about such things. She’s dark haired, and looks a little like Derek; she has the color of his eyes, which is a shifting green vista, and his dark coloring. But Stiles hasn’t seen Jennifer yet, so he doesn’t know yet if the cheekbones are Derek’s or her’s, and Talia isn’t yet old enough to prominently display the result of her genes.

She had pushed through his front door without a thought, but that’s as far as she boldly goes. She’s clinging to her dad now, a two fingers curled into one of the front pockets of Derek’s jeans and is looking at Stiles warily. “Who’s this?”

Derek lays a hand on her head and ruffles her hair. “This is Mr Stilinski and he’s going to be your piano teacher. We went over this earlier.”

Her nose scrunches. “Yeah, yeah. Like grandma.”

Stiles smiles and extends a hand towards her. “Don’t worry about calling me Mr Stilinski, okay? I’m Stiles, and you’re Talia, right?”

Now Talia eyes his hand for a moment before reaching out with the hand that had been tucked into Derek’s pocket. “Yes. I am.” She sounds prim and proud to be shaking his hand and he smiles softly at that.

“I heard your grandma plays piano. Do you like the piano she plays?”

She shrugs and tilts her head back and forth, almost to the point of looking like a bobble-head. “Not really. She plays boring music. She’s tried teaching me too, you know. About notes and something about a doghouse and A B C.”

“Want to show me?” Stiles asks, jerking his head to the doorway which leads to the piano.

Talia looks back to Derek, who nods reassuringly towards her, before taking a step towards Stiles. “Okay.”

 

 

His phone rings Saturday evening as Stiles is curled in an armchair with a composition notebook and a large pencil in hand. His heart freezes for a beat or two as he struggles to recall where his dad is—  he’s in bed; he’s _okay_. Stiles would have heard something if he wasn’t, and there’s no one else the hospital would call him for.

The knowledge doesn’t stop the tremors that run through his hand as he picks the phone up. It’s been a few months, but that doesn’t stop fear.

“Hello, Stiles speaking.”

“Ah, Stiles! It’s Jennifer.”

He smiles and his hands stop shaking. It might in part be to how he’s twirling the pencil, but Jennifer has a pleasant speaking voice. “Have you heard all about the first lesson?”

There’s a small chuckle. “Who’s report are you talking about?”

Stiles shrugs, though he knows Jennifer can’t see him. “Either. Both?”

“Talia loved you, though she’s a bit ambivalent towards the actual piano.”

“I gathered as much. She’s a sweet girl.”

“Derek, however…”

Stiles laughs. “Didn’t like me, did he?”

Jennifer laughs as well. “Not as much as Talia, no, but he respects you for standing up for yourself.”

The thought stumbles his mind. “Respects me?”

“Oh, yes, he tends to respect people that stand up to him. Good job on that, by the way, it’s what convinced him to let Talia continue the lessons.” Her voice turns a bit breathless in the middle of her sentence, and her voice doesn’t fully come back by the end of the sentence. Stiles wonders if he’s just imagining hearing a small scuffle through the phone, a light slap, a shove, the sound of a kiss pressed to the hand holding the phone.

“Good to know, I guess. I’ll be seeing Talia next Thursday then.”

“Yeah, oh, and before I forget, is it okay if I pass your name and number along? In case I hear of someone wanting lessons.”

Stiles snorts. “Of course it is. Have a good night Jennifer.” He hangs up after he hears a goodbye that ends with a high-pitched laugh.

He likes Jennifer. He does. Or, he feels like he should— she’s quite nice on the phone, has a pleasant voice, was the first to ever call him for lessons. But can’t she call him when she’s not going to be distracted by her husband? It reminds Stiles uncomfortably of college; a couple of his friends preferred casual hook-ups, but most of them tended towards serious relationships. They would have lunch together, all of them, and he would watch them sit next to each other and it was never overt that they cared, but Stiles picked up observation skills from his dad. He spotted it in the occasional sideways glance, or the nudge, the trade of food, and it was always so intimate even in person.

With Jennifer, though, it borders the edge of inappropriate. He doesn’t want to hear the details of the two’s closeness. He doesn’t want to hear things like kisses, the possibility of wandering hands, soothing muscles in light massages, all of which he’s starting to believe are happening when he’s been on the phone with her.

 

 

Sunday evening quickly becomes Dinner With the McCalls. It started with a casual invitation from Allison when Stiles’ dad was discharged, but it continued after the first week until it’s now a Thing That Happens. In fact, about twenty minutes before Stiles is about to bully his dad into the car, Scott calls and asks him to pick up some rolls because they don’t have any more, that’s how much this is a Thing That Happens.

So Stiles leaves ten minutes early and makes a quick stop at the Whole Foods that’s on the way, picking up the organic, rye rolls he knows are Allison’s favorite and, spontaneously, a bottle of white wine. The rolls healthier all round for everyone and he happens to know that Mrs McCall also likes rye bread. Scott’s the odd one out here.

He pulls up in front of Scott and Allison’s house and he can hear a loud laugh from the back porch and grins as he walks around the building, his dad trailing behind. “What’s up, what’s up!” Stiles cries as he rounds the corner, a grin in place that he forcefully cements to his face when he spots Isaac sitting at the outdoors, wooden table. Allison is sitting opposite him and Scott is next to him and they’re all smiling so widely. There’s already a bottle of wine on the table, with wine glasses of different fullness in front of them.

“I got the rolls,” he adds, more quietly. “Rye, like Allison likes, and some wine just because.”

Allison’s smile widens as she stands up and walks around. “Thanks, Stiles. I’ll get you a glass,” she says with a half-armed hug around his shoulders as she takes the rolls and the wine before heading inside.

“Stiles,” Scott is whining already. “I don’t like the rye ones.”

“They’re better for you,” Stiles retorts, smiling awkwardly at Isaac. He smiles back, just as awkward and Stiles shifts. Then his dad clasps him on the shoulder.

“I’m going to see if Melissa needs any help.”

“Yeah, sure,” Stiles mutters. “And remember, no alcohol for you.”

John rolls his eyes. “Sure, water only.”

Stiles squints at him as he takes a seat next to Scott. “If you’re good I’ll even let you have lemonade.”

Isaac frowns. “You don’t have to boss him so much.”

Stiles stiffens. “I’ve been trying to keep him healthy since I was thirteen,” he tells Isaac and he’s trying so hard to keep his tone pleasant, but he’s not doing so well by how Scott is starting to shift in his seat. “And he never listened to me and then he had a heart attack. I’m sorry I’m trying to keep that from happening again.”

“Stiles,” Scott says lowly and reaches a hand across to him and Stiles lets him clasp his shoulder. “He’ll be fine.” Then he shoots a glance across to Isaac, who bows his head.

“Sorry,” Isaac mutters and Stiles shrugs.

“It’s fine. I’ve…” He’s not sure how to finish the sentence and just lets it be, watches Scott take a sip of his wine. He’s surprised to see Scott drinking wine, as he always was a beer guy, the lighter taste heavily preferred. It’s weird seeing a glass of pinot in his hand.

“Here’s your glass,” Allison says as she comes back out, a delicate wine glass in hand. These wine glasses had been a wedding present from a relative of Scott’s— an older cousin, Stiles thinks, remembering being the best man and helping Allison and Scott and Lydia go through all the presents.

“Thanks,” he says as Allison sets it down and then pours him a generous serving.

“Your dad can drive you home,” she says with a wink. “You need to relax a little more.”

He eyes her, gaze shifting between her, Scott and Isaac. “You know something I don’t know.”

Scott’s face betrays him where the other two keep straight faces and all it takes is some raised eyebrows and an inquisitive, demanding head tilt to get him to spill. “I heard about you and Derek Hale.”

Stiles had been about to lift his wine glass up, but his arm automatically retracts when he hears Scott’s statement. “And what, exactly, did you hear?”

“He doesn’t like you,” Allison supplies. “That’s what I heard. From him, directly.”

“Wait a second,” Stiles says, palming his hands on the wide armrests of the lawn chair. They’re so wide that only the first knuckle of his fingers curl over the edge, but they do so tightly, harshly; he can feel the edge dig into his skin. “You guys know Derek?”

“Yeah, he works with the local wild animal sanctuary and has asked me for advice now and then,” Scott says, leaning forward to reach his glass and taking a sip. He leans back with his glass still in hand and places it, carefully, on the armrest. His fingers still curl loosely around the stem. “But what about you?”

Stiles’ lip curls. “His wife wants their daughter to take piano lessons and Derek doesn’t exactly appreciate music.”

The three of them stare at him for a moment before they all laugh; Scott’s is loud, Allison is a little more muted and Isaac chuckles more than laughs.

“You didn’t take that too well, did you,” Isaac comments, the chuckles dying off and ending with a wry twist of lips. “Derek came by the clinic Friday and, when asked what’s new, all he could talk about was how annoying you were.”

Stiles takes a sip of his wine and copies Scott, placing it on the armrest. “Someone needed to put him in his place,” he says smirking.

“And you have no time for those who think music is worthless.”

Stiles nods, even lifting his glass towards Isaac in commendation. “Precisely.”

“What’s this I hear about a Hale?” His dad is coming back outside, a basket of the rolls in one hand and a glass of ice water in the other.

“Jesus, you too?” Stiles moans. “How do all of you know Derek?”

“He does a lot of charity work around Beacon Hills,” Allison supplies as Melissa follows Stilinski out. “And his wife is principal at Beacon High.”

Stiles’ mouth drops. “You’re kidding— she’s a principal.”

“It was a big deal,” Melissa says with a kind smile at Stiles. “It was a couple years ago, I think. You were at school.”

The words twist a knife in Stiles. It’s not intentional, but the knife has been in his stomach every single day since the heart attack. Every time he’s been here, at Scott and Allison’s house, and realized that he doesn’t know where the silverware is or where the serving platters are; every time he’s been with Scott and Isaac has been there as well, a tall, curly-haired guy that Stiles knows nothing about; every time there’s mentions of anything Stiles missed in the years he’s been away at undergrad and then grad school, home only for short breaks.

He doesn’t regret it, or at least he doesn’t always regret it. The only thing Stiles regrets is not checking in on his dad often enough, to nag him, make sure he was healthy.

“Why was it a big deal?”

The pause of silence is suspicious, as are the shifty looks that all of them.

“Something about lack of experience,” Allison says, though her words don’t quite erase the suspicion in Stiles, and then stretches. “We’ve had such nice weather lately.”

“I heard it’s supposed to rain sometime soon.”

“That’s good,” Melissa comments. “All of the grass could use a little rain.”

Stiles sips from his wine glass as the talk deviates from Charity Worker Derek Hale and Principal Jennifer Blake, and between the two of them there’s something no one wants to tell him about. He won’t push it. Yet.

 

 

The second lesson goes much better. The fact that there _is_ a second lesson is a tell of how much better it goes. Derek is still gruff, and there’s a trace of unhappiness in his features, but Talia bounds to Stiles with a shy but happy smile.

“So last week you showed me all about the notes you knew,” Stiles says, sitting her on the piano bench and pulling up the chair to the side. “This week we’re going to start the hard stuff. Are you ready?”

Talia nods. Her dark hair, held back in a ponytail, bobs with the movement.

“Good.” Stiles then places a piano book on the stand and Talia’s expression drops.

“I don’t like reading music,” she mumbles.

“I know you don’t,” Stiles says as comfortingly as he can. “But to get to the fun things, we have to do some things we don’t like, okay? We’ll go over reading some notes and then we’ll play some tunes.”

Last week Stiles had learned that Talia has a decent awareness of the notes. C to G she has firmly memorized and the position of her hands over the keys; she knows the C scale. The only thing she doesn’t know is how to read music, and Stiles has figured that it’s because she’d thrown fits over not wanting to learn before and no one had bothered to make sure she knew. It probably wasn’t considered important, which Stiles can understand to an extent, but reading notes is essential for music no matter how good your ears might be.

“So this note is—?” he asks, pointing to the first note. It’s C, the first note most people learn to read.

Talia’s mouth is curled downwards and Stiles thinks it’s cute how much she looks like Derek doing that. He’s only been in his company for, max, forty minutes and yet he can recognize his expressions on his daughter.

“I don’t know.”

Stiles smiles and grabs his pencil. “Why don’t I pencil them all in for you so you know which note to play when you play, how does that sound?”

The nod Talia gives is hesitant, and soon enough Talia has puzzled out most of the notes on the spread pages. They play through it; she looks a bit disgruntled but is still intrigued enough to remain sitting on the bench after the lesson is over. Derek stands and places a hand on her shoulder, rubbing the top of her back gently.

“Jennifer never discussed payment with you, right?”

“Oh,” Stiles says, blinking, because she hadn’t. He’d been a bit distracted by the breathy laughter and the wonder as to what exactly was going on; after the brief moments it took to puzzle it out, he was busy being jealous. “That’s right.”

“We discussed this and figured out a flat rate of fifty-five dollars per lesson.”

Stiles blinks. “Um, yes, that sounds good.” That’s a lot, actually, and he does the math quickly in his head. He used to charge forty-five for a forty-five minute lesson, and Talia’s are only half an hour— is Derek made of money or something? Does being a principal pay that well? He almost feels like he’s cheating them when he replies, “I accept payment of any kind; cash, credit or check. Check might be easiest; at the end of the month a payment for the lessons had is typical and check has been most common.” Almost, because he doesn’t mind the money, and if they’re willing— so be it.

Derek nods. “Okay. We’ll see you next week.”

Stiles waves Talia goodbye and watches from his doorway as they get into Derek’s sports car and drive away.

Jesus. It’s like he has a job again.

 

 

Stiles used to dream about playing at Carnegie or Rockefeller, and those were his mild dreams. His greatest fantasy was Vienna, on tour with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He’d seen the CSO many times before, Columbia was perfectly situated for that, and had even attended a couple master workshops members had held even if he hadn’t played their instrument. So the CSO has a special spot in his heart, but Vienna was the pinnacle of his dreams. There was also Prague, of course, but Vienna had been his mom’s dream and nothing can top that.

Most of his mom’s dreams never came true. She had dreams about having nothing but ice cream to eat all day long, about building a piano by hand and one particular dream of having lots and lots of children. There had been complications with Stiles’ birth and both his mom and dad made the decision not to have any more children.

It didn’t stop her eventual death, but it set the date at a much, much later date than it could have been.

 

 

Talia’s next few lessons are frustrating for a multitude of reasons and they all boil down to one point: Stiles can tell she’s not practicing. She looks guilty after she first plays through the introductory pieces, and Stiles is starting to get a suspicion that it’s not that she doesn’t want to play, but that there’s nowhere for her _to_ play. Her guilt isn’t rooted in how she didn’t practice, but how she had sat down and read through the piano books, recited the notes in her head over and over until she had them memorized, but she didn’t have the hands-on practice.

Which is the most important.

It’s after the fourth lesson that Stiles sits Talia down and tells her that the next half hour is for her to practice and gestures to Derek to join in him in the kitchen. He already has a slight deer-in-headlights expression which, well, _good_. Seriously. He should be nervous because this probably isn’t going to be pretty.

“What?” Derek asks, getting the first shot in.

But Stiles doesn’t rise to the bait and gives him an even stare, one that might be a bit bug-eyed, but still even.

“Fine,” Derek finally mutters. “We don’t have one.”

“And by one you mean…?”

“A piano.”

Now Stiles crosses his arms; these are tricks he most definitely picked up from his dad. They weren’t all that effective on Stiles himself, but they did wonders at the station. However, Derek doesn’t say anything more and Stiles sighs.

“I wish you had told me this earlier. Do you not know what sort of pianos are good, or if you want a piano or a keyboard, or what? Is money an issue? If so, pay me less and invest in something a little more practical for music lessons, like the actual instrument.”

Derek blinks at him, rapidly, and then he crosses his arms. Stiles stares at his biceps for a few moments because, dude, _seriously_ , but then it’s more of an issue of them having the exact same stance and how that’s not cool, so he quickly goes to lean against his kitchen counters, uncrossing his arms to rest his palms on the edges.

“Money’s not an issue.”

“Well, something is. And until you figure it out, I don’t see the point in having more lessons. She’s not getting any better if she only gets to play thirty minutes in an entire week.” Derek doesn’t say anything, and he’s not even looking at Stiles which is kind of insulting.

“I am willing to help,” Stiles grounds out after a few, tense moments of him staring intensely at Derek and him not looking anywhere near him. “But you have to tell me what the problem is.”

Still nothing. Infuriating _nothing_.

He raps his knuckles on the cupboards as he moves away. “I don’t want to be an ass about this, but either find a solution by next week or don’t come. But today won’t be another lesson, another half an hour going over what I’ve already told her every other lesson we’ve had. She can use it to practice.”

“We’ll go home,” Derek growls, shoving past him roughly but still with grace. It makes the small push Stiles gets feel purposeful. “We don’t need pity.”

Stiles nearly swears really, really loudly. He reigns himself in with the knowledge of the young girl in the room next door and how he knows that she can hear everything they’re saying. He would know, he eavesdropped enough as a kid when sitting at that piano.

“Have a good day.” It’s the only reply he can muster and moments later Derek is ushering a confused Talia out the front door, who shoots him an unhappy look as they go down the front steps.

A masochist to the very depth of his core, Stiles leans against the frame because Derek hadn’t closed the door behind him and watches Derek bundle Talia into the car. He can hear her start protesting and Stiles knows that Derek is shushing her with low-toned orders and furrowed brows though he can neither hear nor see him.

It’s with derision that Stiles gives Derek a salute as he gets into the car. Derek even pauses, his face heavily guarded, before sliding into the car. It’s a few quick movements that Stiles can easily predict from there: key in the ignition, hand on the shift stick and then a press to the accelerator and the two of them are gone.

 

 

It’s just Stiles’ luck that he runs into Derek in the grocery store the next day. He looks happy, though, a smile on his face that Stiles has never, ever seen and a woman next to him. It must be Jennifer. She’s beautiful in the way that Derek is beautiful; her movements are graceful, her hair is swept back and curled in a way that accentuates the delicacy of her features. Where she looks fragile with Mary Jane heels and floral, flowing clothes, Derek is the opposite in neatly cut clothes and dark stubble.

Talia’s not with them, but Stiles soon realizes that she is, she just ran ahead of them. She’s back, at the side of the cart now, a box of fruit roll-ups in her hands and a begging, pleading look on her face. Jennifer laughs and Derek shakes his head in a no, but then Jennifer plucks it out of Talia’s hands and places it in the cart.

Stiles isn’t close enough to hear their words, but he’s had enough re-lives of his own childhood memories and fantasies to fill them in. He doesn’t approach them, mostly because he only came here to get some fresh corn, but also because he doesn’t want to relive the spine-curling shame of the day before. After Derek had escaped with Talia, Stiles had hated himself and curled on the couch for the two hours until his dad came home. How could he have done that, how could he have assumed anything?

It wasn’t pity, but Derek’s assumption makes him feel cold for some reason.

 

 

They don’t come on Thursday and Stiles sits at the piano staring vacantly at the sheet music in front of him. They hadn’t paid him, and he’d also bought the piano book for Talia and hadn’t gotten it back. Normally he wouldn’t be so stingy about something like that, but he’s going to be stingy if Derek’s going to be a bigger ass back at Stiles. Not that he, you know, _has_ been a big dick to Stiles, beyond the normal, but the least they could do is mail him a check. If Derek’s going to refuse to be an adult here, he’s the bigger ass of the two.

Saturday morning Stiles makes the next move and calls Jennifer.

“Hello?”

Oh _fuck_ , it’s Derek, not Jennifer. He sounds sleepy, as though just-woken up, which isn’t possible. It’s _ten_. Stiles nearly chickens, but instead he clears his throat. “Is Jennifer available?”

There’s rustling; Stiles thinks it’s Derek sitting up, and he maps the movements out in his head. Legs swing over the edge of the bed, he stands, the slight creak of a door. “Can I tell her who this is?”

Stiles wonders if he can get away with not answering, if Derek would hand the phone over if he came upon her right that moment, but decides to tell him anyways. “Oh, it’s Stiles. Good morning Derek.”

There’s a long, long pause. Stiles can’t hear anything. “Stiles?” He sounds considerably more awake now, which amuses Stiles.

“Yeah. Did I wake you up? Sorry ‘bout that, just wanted to have a little chat with Jennifer.”

Oooh, is that teeth-grinding Stiles hears? “What did you want to talk about with her?”

“Well,” Stiles drawls, “I’ve not been paid for one and I wanted confirmation from her about ending the lessons.”

_More_ teeth-grinding. Man, Stiles is really getting on Derek’s nerves and he probably shouldn’t enjoy it this much. “I’ll write a check and mail it to you.”

“Oh, that’d be great,” Stiles replies, all fake cheer and courtesy. “And I definitely appreciate that, but I’m more concerned about whether or not she knows that the lessons have stopped.”

Stiles thinks he hears Derek swear, which is oddly complimentary. “She doesn’t,” Derek finally says, tone heavy. Stiles can hear shuffling again, the same creak as before. “She hardly asked, so she probably wasn’t too attached to the idea of piano lessons in the first place.”

The tone is biting and it’s meant to hit him hard, but it doesn’t. Not really. Okay, it kind of does, because Jennifer had called him after all. 

“Is that a defensive tone?” Stiles asks lightly instead of the multitude of harmful rejoinders. “I think that was definitely a defensive tone. You’re trying to make it seem like she wouldn’t care to back up a poorly made decision.”

“You’re the one who said to stop coming,” Derek growls. “So we stopped.”

“I wasn’t being _serious_ you asshole,” Stiles hisses. “I was trying to get you to tell me what the problem was.”

“What a stupid method,” Derek hisses back. “Throwing me a possibility that I would actually act upon! Wow, you’ve really outdone yourself.”

God, if Stiles was holding anything right now, it would be flying across the room. It’s a good thing that he had settled himself into the couch for this, even though he’s stood up and started pacing around the dining table. “Derek, I just want to help. If Talia needs a place to practice, she can come here. I don’t care, I just want her to practice to actually learn.”

Stiles listens to Derek inhale and exhale, inhale once more and exhale, again and again, before he seems to make any sort of decision. “I’ll let you know.”

And then he hangs up. So Derek really is the biggest dick on the planet.

 

 

Scott shows up later that week with a box of Sam Adams, despite knowing Stiles opinion on Sam Adams: it’s from _Boston_. That, alone, is reason enough for Stiles to boycott it, but he also just doesn’t like the taste. He prefers heavier beers, ones that are a little difficult to swallow, and Sam Adams never cut it.

But speaking of Boston, Scott had to have searched all over the place to find the New England beer. It was on purpose and Stiles narrows his eyes at him as he lets himself in. Scott just grins back, the easy-going one that Stiles has seen mature over the years they’ve known each other, and he just can’t be annoyed. It’s a friendship thing, he supposes, to buy the beer your best friend hates as a sign of love. Uh— maybe not to much most people, but this is Scott.

“My dad’s supposed to be home in an hour,” Stiles tells him as Scott places the box on the table and opens it up. “And we can’t be completely wasted.

Scott gives him a look. “Dude, we’re so much older than twenty-one it shouldn’t even matter if we’re wasted or not. Besides, it’s only beer.”

“I don’t know about you,” Stiles says as Scott opens the box and passes him a bottle. “But my alcohol tolerance took a severe nosedive once I started grad school. Whenever I had free time, I tended to sleep.”

Scott chuckles, twisting the top off his bottle. It’s weird, sometimes, to see the wedding band on his finger. “Yeah, I remember at the wedding you were totally gone. Man, it was the funniest thing. You kept on making these toasts, even when we were on the dance floor.”

“You,” Stiles says, pointing a finger at him and wagging it. “Decided to make me best man. That title comes with a speech and so I was making good on it.”

“Throughout the entire reception.”

“That was years ago,” Stiles complains as he opens his own bottle. “Stop holding it against me.”

Scott just grins and tilts his head back as he takes a swig. “Ah, good ole Sam Adams!”

Stiles takes a sip of his and grimaces on principle. It’s not that bad, it tastes fine today actually, but he can’t let Scott know that. He’d never let Stiles live it down. “You bought it just to piss me off.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Scott replies, taking a seat and Stiles following suit.

“I know you, Scott, I know you.”

“I’m not the one who hates the Red Sox.”

“But you should.”

Scott laughs again. “It’s been too long since we’ve had this,” he says after a few moments.

There’s nothing for Stiles to say in response to this— what could he say? ‘Yeah, not since we were in high school did we just sit down and talk.’ He lays blame too easily, and most of it tends to fall onto himself. He blames himself for not sharing Scott well, because that is one of the most difficult things Stiles has ever had to learn to do. Stiles never had to share any other people in his life before; his mom died when he was young, he has no siblings, and his dad is still in love with his mom.

“It has been.”

Scott takes a deep breath and Stiles wants to retract the statement and say something about Melissa, or Allison, maybe even Isaac if he could think of anything to say. The deep breath is foreboding, it means a serious talk is to come. Stiles shouldn’t have opened the door for Scott, especially since he didn’t bring Blue Moon. Seriously, Sam Adams? How did he even _get_ Sam Adams in California?

“We need to have a talk.”

“About what?” Stiles tries to play it off, lets a playful smiles curl the corner of his lips as he takes a sip from his bottle. “How’s the house, by the way? No leaks lately, right?”

There’s that furrow in Scott’s brow, the one that tells Stiles Scott will not be put off by his evasion techniques.

“You should be in Santa Barbara.”

Stiles clams up immediately. He will talk on end about his time at UCSB, the pieces he’d been close to perfecting, the melodies that ran through his head daily and walking around the campus and the city, but leaving? That is not something he will talk about.

“It’s not right that you quit, Stiles. Your dad’s not happy.”

“He can tell me himself,” Stiles mutters, hands curling tight around the neck of the bottle and loosening, fingers dragging up and down, around the rim.

Scott sighs. “You’re very good at evasion.”

“Clearly not good enough,” Stiles retorts, lifting the bottle to take a long draft.

“You were so close, and you were doing so well.”

Clearly his draft was not long enough and Stiles continues drinking, essentially chugging the entire bottle down and then reaching for another. “It doesn’t matter what you say now, I’ve already dropped out.”

“You—” Scott frowns, in that loud way of his, a breath blowing through the corner of his mouth and a deep swallow. “When did you drop out?”

Stiles smiles, and it’s a smile he’d really rather not see in the mirror. “Some weeks after the attack. I went down, packed my apartment up, dropped out of school. I’m a real delinquent now, nothing like when we used to cut high school.”

“Stiles,” Scott says with a touch of desperation in his voice. “You never told anyone.”

Stiles snorts. “Come on, really? You think I’d just go ahead and spread the word that I’m a drop-out?” He takes a swig of beer. It tastes awful, but Stiles is sure that the more he drinks, the less he’ll fully taste how much he doesn’t care for Sam Adams.

“You didn’t tell your dad,” Scott points out.

Another snort. “Yeah, I did. He probably doesn’t want to spread the story of his failure of a son.”

“You didn’t tell me.” Scott is quiet this time, and he looks melancholy over the beer he’s hardly touched; Stiles wonders why he didn’t comment on the word failure, and that only makes him feel more like the failure he is..

This is the part that Stiles feels guilty about. Scott is his best friend, no one could ever replace what Scott means to him, but— Scott has his own life. Stiles knows that Scott never consulted him about buying a house, or sweated about wedding details to him. Stiles found out about the house nearly three months after they had moved in and the wedding? Scott was calling Isaac. Stiles was the Best Man, but he felt like that was more a homage to how long they had been friends than their recent closeness.

He sighs deeply and chugs the rest of his second beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his head when he sets it back down. “Dude, this beer is shit. Remind me why you got Sam Adams again?”

“Stiles—”

“No, seriously,” Stiles says, putting his hands up. “If we’re having this talk, we are going to be really fucking drunk. There’s no other way.” Oh god, that furrow again, Jesus _Christ_.

“Allison told me that you would—”

“Fuck that shit,” Stiles says, grinning widely and standing, going to grab his car keys. “Let’s go grab some Jack and get totally wasted.”

The furrow is gone and there’s a half amused and half disapproving expression on his face. “Jack? Are we still in high school or something?”

Stiles shrugs, twirling his car keys around his finger. “Emotionally and mentally, yeah, kind of.”

Scott stands. “I prefer rum, you know.”

“And I vodka, so come on now.”

“But when we get back, we are definitely talking about this.”

 

 

They don’t. Stiles knows Scott and the moment he gets hard liquor in him, all he wants to talk about is marital bliss with Allison and the cutest animals he saw at the clinic that day. It works like a charm, just as Stiles expected, and he feels about a third a shred of guilt for his underhanded technique that he should.

Maybe one day they’ll talk about how Stiles has felt slowly and inexorably edged out of Scott’s life, but now is nowhere near the time. Stiles would never baldly say such a thing to Scott’s face because he can just picture the look of pain and terror on Scott’s face and that is not something he can handle. It never was, really, and Stiles will protect Scott anyway he can, even if it’s from himself.

Wow, like, just how obsessed does that make him sound? It’s not even an obsession; Stiles just tends to be quite protective.

 

 

The doorbell rings in the middle of Stiles practicing, mindlessly, wondering if he should try to hop back onto the graduate degree program in the spring. He’s mostly sure they would take him back, but he doesn’t want to rely on a ‘mostly sure.’ A definitely would be preferred.

He doesn’t notice the first doorbell ring, trying to get a tricky piece of fingering right, testing using his fourth versus his third finger, but it rings again when he paused to pencil in a ‘4’ over the note.

“Coming,” he calls, setting the pencil down and going to the front door. He doesn’t have time to really wonder who it is, and when he sees Derek he slams the door shut again. Rethinking his split-second decision, he opens it again and winces at the anger cloud on Derek’s face, though it’s a crestfallen Talia that really breaks his heart. “Sorry ‘bout that Talia,” Stiles says, trying to sound much happier than he feels. “What’s up?”

“Daddy said he wanted to talk to you,” she mumbles, glancing reassuringly back at Derek, who nods.

“And I brought Talia, because she gives me courage, right?” Derek says while squeezing Talia’s shoulders, not quite looking at Stiles. Which is fine, really, because Stile is refusing to look at Derek on principle.

“Come on in, then.” If it was just Derek, there is no way Stiles would be inviting him into his house, but Talia is a different thing. “Talia, why don’t you go play the piano while I talk with your dad?”

Her mouth opens, probably because she’d rather hear the conversation, but a firm pat on her back clicks it closed and she heads to the piano without another word. Stiles grins at her retreating back.

“Promise her ice cream or something?”

Derek grimaces. “Storytime, actually.”

Their eyes meet, Derek’s lips starting to quirk into a smile after a moment, Stiles already at full-fledged grin, but the small smiles on Derek’s face hardens into a hard line. The grin slides off Stiles’ face unwillingly, because he had decided years and years ago that his face is for mostly smiling, whether a smirk, snarky smile, or a honest one. He doesn’t like feeling like he should be angry for this confrontation.

“We need to talk.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, serious for a moment, before nodding out the door. “I don’t really think a car that expensive is safe for a small kid.”

Derek frowns, lips tugging downwards from that flat, unforgiving line, and glances behind him. “My car is perfectly safe.”

“Have you even looked at the safety ratings for it?”

Derek nods. “Of course I did; I wouldn’t have bought it if I wasn’t sure she’d be safe.”

Stiles mouth drops open, but he hastens to close it the moment he realizes. “Oh, okay, good dad aren’t you? You can come on in too. D’you want anything, water, juice—”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Oh, sure,” he says, checking on Talia. She’s sitting at the piano, though instead of playing she’s simply staring at the sheet music Stiles had been using. “Why don’t you wait in the kitchen, I’ll just get her something to play.” He pats Derek’s bicep as he walks by and Stiles really wants to laugh at how tense he is, but restrains himself.

He sets some music up for Talia, something simple, and lets her know she can either practice reading or play whatever she wants. She smiles happily and immediately sets to in a way that lets Stiles know that she honestly enjoys the piano. He returns to the kitchen with a smile on his face that doesn’t wilt or disappear in the face of Derek’s stormcloud expression.

“She reminds me of myself,” he says lightly, getting a cup of water for himself. “She really seems to love the piano.”

Derek’s lips twist. “I’m sorry,” he grinds out after a moment.

Stiles eyebrows rise as he turns the faucet on, filling his glass. “Oh, for what?”

Derek closes his eyes, but it’s for a moment only, and when he opens them he pins Stiles with a hard stare. It’s possibly the first stare that has not been hostile or angry and it’s hard to resist being captivated by the color. “For being rude and not accepting your generosity.”

He is very careful as he sets his glass back down; those eyes have made him weak in a dangerous way. “It was not my place to criticize.”

“It was your place to be honest and—” Derek swallows, “Ask I’d like to ask you for help.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles asks, smiling widely. “My help? You’re asking for help? _You_?”

“Yes, I am,” is Derek’s short reply. His expression is cross, eyebrows furrowed and lips tightly pressed together.

“I’m sorry, it’s just not what I was expecting. What do you want my help for?”

“I— I know nothing about music,” Derek says in a rush, “and neither does Jennifer, so we don’t know what sort of piano to buy or if it’d even be a worthwhile purchase.”

The smile turns contemplative. “That’s true, isn’t it. If Talia is the only one to play, I would caution against buying a piano for a while yet. They’re quite expensive and if she ends up quitting, you’d lose quite a bit of money. Have you thought about keyboards?”

Derek’s face twists. “Of course not. They’re not real pianos.”

Stiles snorts. “How rich _are_ you? Keyboards are awesome and it’s not like everyone can afford a piano.”

His body posture stiffens and Stiles picks up the glass again with a sigh. “Relax, okay, it’s no big deal. For now, I recommend looking into keyboards. If you really don’t like them, don’t buy one, but they’re usually considerably cheaper than a real piano and a better return if Talia quits. In the meantime, you’ll need a place for her to practice. Have you asked her school?”

Derek’s posture remains stiff, shoulders set and jaw tense. “I was thinking of taking you up on your offer.”

An eyebrows rises as he sputters on a sip of water. “Practicing here? Um, sure, okay, just a sec…” Stiles trails off, brow furrowing, as he thinks about it. “Afternoons are okay, anytime really, but let me know ahead of time? Do you have my number?”

Derek shakes his head and why is he still so stiff? Hasn’t Stiles just solved every single problem he’s had with ease? Like, seriously, he needs to learn how to relax. “I have a business card somewhere,” he mumbles, looking around the kitchen before finding one his dad must have stuck to the fridge months ago and pulls the magnet off. “Here, take this, text or call my cell.”

He watches Derek read the card; it’s a bit outdated, listing his information at UCSB, but it’s still his most businesslike item. “Thanks,” Derek says a few moments later, pocketing the card and pulling out his wallet from his back pocket. “And here’s mine.” He squints at Stiles as he offers it. “I’m not expecting you to actually call me for anything, but just in case.”

Stiles grins crookedly as he takes it; it’s warm and he struggles not to think that it’s because of its proximity to Derek’s ass. “I’m thinking this was Jennifer’s idea.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Derek scowls, which is totally a _yes_.

“Well, now that we’ve got that sorted out,” Stiles proclaims, leaning across to clasp Derek’s shoulder. “Let me go start an over-due lesson.” The smiles that Derek gives is startling akin to the one he had seen in the grocery store and it nearly roots him to the spot because it hits him that maybe, just maybe, he’s really, really attracted to Derek.

Not that he’s going to do anything about it, but it sucks all round to be severely attracted  (and since Stiles is mentally six, he won’t think of actually liking the man) to a happily married man.


End file.
